Since recalling the events of yesterday in their right order often requires significant intellectual effort, while those of last month recede serially into a cloudy jumble, it would be an act of unimaginable hubris to claim seriously to remember last February. What were you doing on 10 February, for example?
Well, for myself, I was preoccupied with an odd mark on one of the terracotta tiles of the kitchen floor — odd because scrubbing would not remove it and because it seemed to be coming up out of the stone rather than being a stain on the surface. Strange.
I know it was 10 February because, driven by some peculiar catastrophic dread, I noted my discovery in the diary. It's still there among other crucial observations and instructions like 'Buy more washing up stuff', 'Super funds manager — 11.15 am', 'Pay electricity bill TODAY', 'NB NB Super funds manager — today!' and so on.
Looking back on that page now, I see it was the 41st day and seventh week of the year and in Thailand the feast of Makha Bucha, which commemorates Buddha's teachings on the full moon day of every third lunar month.
Four months later, the stain has spread through three more tiles and taken on a streaky pallor. No getting round it: these are moribund tiles, a diagnosis cheerfully confirmed when I call in Sam — 'Carpentry and Building Pty Ltd. Winner of the HIA 2008 Custom built home of the year $200–$350k'.
Sam assures me the malaise, caused by damp from the kitchen sink, will spread unless expensive surgery and transplants are undertaken, though he phrases it differently: 'They're buggered. Rip 'em out.'
Gloomily, I tell Sam that since all lunar months are roughly the same duration as the synodic month of 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes and three seconds, I am losing three tiles every feast of Makha Bucha. He just looks at me and says, 'I'll send you a quote'.
I took no offence at his cavalier attitude because I made those figures up anyway.
It's not difficult in these days of financial, climatic, strategic and technological complexity to feel haunted by some sense of a larger force operating, causing havoc. In moments of profound misanthropy — an affliction that frequently overtakes me on days when I have to confront the manager of our frozen super funds — the disintegration of one's kitchen floor is easily enlisted as